Page 30

June - Nash

“Y ou’re killing me, Westie,” Tate mutters while chuckling. That gets me to stop pacing for the first time since he told me his dad was on his way over twenty minutes ago. “Sit down before you screw up that healing leg of yours. Give those crutches a break.”

I frown but sit on one of the chairs on the porch next to Tate. He offers me a beer for the second time and I shake my head with the same answer as last time. “I have to be sober when I talk to him.”

“One beer, dude,” Tate replies, then pauses as a thought comes to him. He smiles, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “On second thought, I should probably save the beer for Dad. He’s gonna need a drink when you’re done with him.”

I try not to let the panic already flowing through my veins surge. Tate’s just being a jackass because that’s what friends do. I flip him the bird and he laughs. “Please don’t say you’re going to stick around to chirp me?”

“Hell no.” Tate shakes his head and sips his beer. “I don’t want to be a witness to whatever act of violence my father is going to inflict on you.”

What the actual fuck? My eyes widen and my mouth drops open. Tate laughs harder. “Seriously, dude. I love you but fuck right off, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry.” Tate sips his beer again. “You’re looking for a lifetime with my sister, so I thought you loved getting teased relentlessly. My bad.”

He grins again and I flip him the bird. Again. Down the sloping front field of the old restored farmhouse where Tenley lives, and I have been to while visiting, Jordan Garrison’s Rivian truck turns onto the drive and my heart tries to escape my chest again. “When is Ten coming back?”

“Not till later. She went dress shopping in Portland with Mac, your other female cousins, and Mac’s sister and her mom,” I explain as I start to get out of the chair again. It takes me a minute, because the doctor doesn’t want me to put my full weight on my leg yet and I always fumble with the crutches when getting up off furniture. “They were going to stay for dinner too.”

"Okay well…" Tate gets up out of his chair as his dad parks near the barn, which the Garrison family converted into a gym and guest apartment. "I'm gonna go upstairs, but I'll listen for gunshots."

“Seriously, Tater Tot, fuck off,” I hiss as my blood pressure spikes again.

Tate waves at his dad, ignoring me. Jordan nods at his son. “Don’t run off Tate. I have something I want you to hear from me.”

Tate turns away from the screen door and looks at his dad skeptically. “Please say it’s good news.”

“I think so…” Jordan climbs the stairs to the porch. “Achilles has been fired.”

“Whoa,” I say, followed immediately by a sigh of relief. I had no idea how to handle that situation, but I knew it had to be handled. Problem was that Tenley refused to talk about it to anyone, especially not the police, which is what I wanted her to do. Her family too.

“Because of Tenley?” Tate shakes his head as soon as the words leave his mouth. “I mean because of what he did. To Tenley.”

His Dad nods. “Yep. As it should be.”

“He told them?” I ask, stunned.

“Nope.” Jordan rubs the back of his neck and looks around the porch. He spots the cooler by Tate’s vacated chair and walks over. “I told them. And your dad made a call to their owner. And Devin and Luc talked to his team’s general manager.”

He pauses, pulls a beer out of the cooler, and offers it to me. When I shake my head he twists off the cap for himself. “And I also heard a couple of players called the union hotline and tipped them off to issues with Coach Achilles.”

He catches my eye and I look out at the sprawling field to the left of the house where the sun is starting to set. Yeah, Tate, Crew, and I all called the Player’s Union hotline for workplace issues. Tenley may not have wanted to be at the center of an investigation, but none of us could just let him keep coaching and walking through life without consequences. The player hotline was our way of keeping Tenley anonymous. We figured at the very least they would interview Bryce.

“The team management confronted him and he admitted it. Blamed drinking and drugs and youth.”

“I’ve been young and I’ve never groped a teenager,” I remark.

Jordan nods. “The official line will be he stepped down for personal reasons.”

"Good." Tate nods and lifts his beer toward his dad in a motion of acknowledgment. "Thank you, Dad."

“Thank you Tate. I know you were one of those hotline calls. You’re a good brother,” Jordan says with a small smile and he turns his eyes to me. “And you’re a good soon-to-be-ex-husband.”

He laughs at his joke. Tate clears his throat awkwardly and disappears into the house without another word, which has Jordan’s chuckle fading away. He looks at me with concern in his eyes which are the same shade of blue as Tenley's. "Everything okay with you and Ten? Lawyer still getting the paperwork?"

“Yeah.” I nod and wish I had a beer now. “I actually got the divorce papers yesterday. Well, they’re at my house in Canada. Charlie, my lawyer, had them couriered there this morning. Crew signed for them.”

“Cool,” he says and leans against the white wood railing of the porch, his butt half on the ledge. “I mean, it’s weird that my daughter is divorcing her husband so she can date him, but everything about you two is pretty insane. And Tenley has always been my wild child.”

“I know our marriage wasn’t exactly your dream situation for your only daughter,” I say and lean heavily on my crutches because my knees are shaking and it has nothing to do with my recent surgery. “But I wanted you to know that I’m so glad it happened. If it hadn’t, I don’t know if Tenley and I would have really gotten to know each other. Your daughter is an amazing person and I’m lucky to have her in my life, for real.”

He smiles, but it feels slightly guarded like he's waiting for a shoe to drop. Jordan is a very smart man. I swallow and for a second the only sound is the crickets waking up in the tall grass behind the barn where Tate can't be bothered to mow. I take a long, slow breath and get to the point. "So I'd like to ask you if it would be alright… if you would approve of… I'd like to ask you if I could have your approval to marry Tenley."

Jordan blinks and I can see his whole body stiffen. “Again?”

I nod. “Yes, sir. Again. This time with all of her loved ones, and mine, present. This time for real.”

Jordan doesn't respond. In fact, he stays silent, staring out at the field in the darkening light for so long that the sound of the crickets gets drowned out by the sound of my heart pounding. Jordan stands up. He’s still in good shape and just as tall as me. An intimidating presence. I’m suddenly more than a little worried that Tate’s taunts might have truth behind them. Maybe Jordan will kill me. Jordan lifts his hand and points out at the field. “You know how easy it would be to bury a body out there? Or in the lake in the center of town? It’s essentially bottomless. A couple of dumbbells from the gym tied to the feet of a corpse and no one would find it, like, ever.”

Is this real life? I’m about to pinch myself in hopes this is a stress dream I can wake up from when Jordan bursts out laughing. “Shit. I have always wanted to do that!”

I raise a hand to the front of my chest, trying to calm my galloping heart. He keeps laughing and bends to get another beer from the cooler. He hands it to me and I take it because maybe it will calm my nerves. Jordan wipes tears from his eyes and stifles his laughter. "I never even got to threaten to kill her high school boyfriends because Tenley never brought them home. I don't even think she had a serious one. I honestly didn't want to know, but I did want to be at her wedding."

He gives me a pointed stare and I nod. I twist the cap off the beer as Jordan takes another sip of his. “I also thought that her wedding would be about ten years from now.”

I take a small sip. “I thought my wedding would be twenty years from now.”

“So why do it again, for real, right now?”

I take another sip and exhale after I swallow. I try to be as calm as the breeze swirling by us as I speak. “Because I’m madly, deeply, completely in love with her and it feels so incredibly wrong to divorce the woman I hope to marry one day.”

Jordan seems to mull that over. I take the silence as a chance to keep pleading my case. “If she really wants to wait, I will. I’ll divorce her immediately. Like I said the papers are ready. And asking you won’t be in vain because I really do intend to spend my life with her. So, if you say yes, I just won’t have to do it again in five, ten, or twenty years.”

Jordan stares at me. I can’t read his expression. I’m too nervous to read anything more subtle than a stop sign right now. He leans towards me and gently taps our bottles together. “You are a great kid. I’ve never seen my daughter so happy. You have my blessing.”

A wave of relief floods me. I smile for the first time since I told Tate about this plan this morning. He smiles. “So when are you gonna ask her?”

“I don’t know,” I say and sip my beer, finally tasting it. “I’ll figure it out when my blood pressure stops spiking.”

"Hey, Dad! Do you need me to help bury a body?" Tate's laughter trickles down from the upstairs window he's yelling out of.

“It’s all fun and games until you have to ask Chance Echolls the same question,” Jordan calls back and is met by a groan of despair from Tate.

I smile and make a mental note to stress Tate the hell out when he finally decides to ask to marry Mallory.